Digital Media Integration

Whether you're using electronic media to enrich users' experiences or sell them something, you must learn to harness the strengths of all available media to reach your target audience. Learn here how to integrate digital media harmoniously and effectively.

Like this article? We recommend

Attention Getters: Integrating Digital Media

Whether for good or ill, electronic media are pervasive in our lives and will
continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Whether we're looking to
enrich the user's experience or sell him or her something, we need to learn
to use all the media available to our target audience to reach them by using
each medium in a manner appropriate to its strengths and so that each medium we
use operates in a symbiotic way with all the others.

The concept of digital media integration can be defined in two ways, although
the two are not entirely unrelated:

Various media (film, Web sites, CDs, etc.) being used together in an
effort to enrich the user's experience of creative content (for example, a
movie that has both a soundtrack and a Web site)

Various means of distribution (newspapers, television, radio, the
Internet, etc.) used in concert to deliver an advertiser's message to
targeted consumers

We'll begin with the first definition, which in the old days in this
business (10 years ago) was called simply multimedia, or interactive multimedia.

Interactive Multimedia

The definition of multimedia has changed since then and has taken on a more
market-driven coloration. Those of us who survived the dotcom meltdown learned
that, with the exception of eBay and one other company, businesses can't
make it on an Internet-only play. eBay is an anomaly; it could not have existed
before the Internet. Virtually all other businesses need a bricks-and-mortar
presence to reach their consumers and maintain consistent profitability.

NOTE

The "one other company" was inspired by Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th
president (18691877), who, when asked to name his two favorite songs, said
that one was "Yankee Doodle" and the other one wasn't.

In the "Good Old Days," it was about the immersive experience one
had when text, stills, video, audio, animation, and so on were used in a
coordinated manner in a presentation. That "stew" has been replaced by
a media buffet. There is a tacit understanding that no one mediumnot even
the mighty Internetcan substitute for other media. Nor can the Internet
fully incorporate the experience that the user has with other media. You might
have video on a Web site, but it's not the same as watching television; you
might have audio, but it's not like putting on headphones to focus on
enjoying a song.

So, the current thinking is to use appropriate media side by side, so to
speak, and have them piggyback on each other. For example, Spider-Man has
trailers that are seen in theatres and on television, which, in turn, seek to
drive you to the movie's Web site. Commercials for the movie drive you to
the Web site and may also invite you to enter a contest, the clues for which
will be revealed in the trailer, on the site, or in the movie. Presuming that
you like the movie and are a fan of the concept or the actors, your
"experience" of the movie (or, more precisely, the movie's
"environment" or "world") is heightened beyond what you feel
by just going to see it. The experience can be part of your life, both before
and after you've seen the movie; you can bathe in a sort of
"preglow" and afterglow. It doesn't have to go away after the
movie's over, like the lingering scent of someone's perfume or
aftershave after that person has left the room.

No one medium can do it all. No medium can be said to be the best or ultimate
medium. Each has attributes that make it unique. For example, television at its
best has great picture and sound, yet it's not interactive. The Internet
is interactive, yet the quality of the images is vastly
inferior to those on a large, flat-screen TV monitor. Films are immersive, with
the finest audio and image quality currently available, yet they lack the
intimacy of television and the interactivity of the Net. It's a matter of
understanding what each medium offers, what each of their strengths and
weaknesses are, and packaging together for the user.

A good analogy is building a team to tackle a project. No one is great at
everything; the best teams integrate the best qualities of their members to
achieve the desired result. A good leader harnesses the strengths of each member
of the team to produce the desired objective.